At the advice of today’s Listen, we’re getting right to the point. No long intros in this one.

Here’s the skinny. Every piece of content you write, create, or record should have three things for success. First, you need a point to your content. Then you need to figure out what the purpose of that content is. Finally, you need to nail down the path for your audience.

Point, Purpose, and Path. Those three things are all you need for content marketing success. Okay, that’s not entirely true. You need plenty of other things, but those three are essential. Copyblogger’s Sonia Simone breaks down what that all means in today’s Listen.

We’ll let Sonia handle it from here…

• (02:58) Point. What’s in it for the audience? When you’re writing your content, have a point and get to it quickly.
• (04:18) Creating a content outline before you start writing will help you get to the point and stay on point.
• (04:58) Start with the headline. Make sure it’s on point.
• (05:26) The second P is Purpose. What is the intended purpose of the content? To attract new leads, to educate current ones, to answer objections? What’s the purpose?
• (06:20) Every piece of content you create should fit into a strategic context.
• (07:10) When you have a goal, you need to have a strategy for how you’re going to reach that goal.
• (08:25) It’s possible, and totally normal, for one piece of content to have multiple purposes. Just make sure that each piece has at least one purpose.
• (08:56) The third P is Path. You need to define what you want your audience to do after reading a piece of content. This is your call-to-action.
• (10:20) Don’t think of this like a funnel. It’s just a way to get your audience closer to your overall goal.
• (11:35) What’s the logical next step? It can’t be a huge step, it needs to be simple.

This podcast will definitely improve your content in only 16-minutes.

That’s right—twenty! Maybe that seems like too many to include on a list, but they’re legit. As part of their State of Social Media 2018 campaign, Buffer partnered with Product Hunt to put together a list of the latest trending social media tools for marketers to try this year. And, with more than 5,000 tools in the marketing technology landscape, esteemed lists like these can be super helpful.

We’ll crack open 10 for you, but continue on for the full list, how-tos, and the pros and cons of each tool. 

1. Crello is a simplified graphic design tool with 10,000 free templates, millions of stock images, and free design elements. You can even create animated designs!
2. Fastory is like Canva for IG Stories, as a Product Hunter described it. It’s an online graphics editor that allows you to create animated or static stories easily.
3. Botletter lets you send newsletters on Facebook Messenger. You can also grow your Messenger subscriber list, send your subscribers messages on Messenger (or botletters), and analyze your performance.
4. Promo claims to be the easiest video maker on the market (and many Product Hunters agree with the ease of use). With a library of over 2.8 million premium video clips and licensed music, Promo can help you create high-quality videos in just a few minutes.
5. Anchor Videos is a new feature in Anchor, a popular audio network app, which allows you to turn your audio recordings into beautifully animated videos with your transcript. Zam…
6. ContentStudio is a social media content curation tool that allows you to find content quickly, schedule posts, and automate campaigns.
7. Campsite solves a problem that many Instagram marketers face—having only one link for the entire Instagram account—by creating a mobile-friendly page where you can list multiple links.
8. Tagwin makes the process of running Instagram contests super easy!
9. Story Slicer helps you split your long videos into short clips so that you can post them as stories on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more.
10. Station: One app to rule them all… Station lets you unite all your apps into one beautifully-built workstation and boosts your productivity. Mmm…productivity…

…Like the phrase, “mix and mingle”? No? Okay, not this writer’s best work. She’s had a hard day…

Today’s Watch is just about that, though—mixing your Pringles! Ya know, like stacking a pizza pringle on top of a barbeque pringle on top of a jalapeno pringle… If this sounds too low-brow for you, well, you might have a point. But if stacking different-flavored Pringles on top of each other is wrong, we don’t want to be right!

To be honest, the ad is getting a spotlight today not for the wow-worthy flavor stacking, but for Bill Hader’s comedic delivery. We <3 you, Bill!